Day 30

 Day 30!

Dispatches from the road by Bill Poindexter

Day 30

Wow day 30, I’ve had a full 30 days, only two days off and a lot of pretty intense riding. I am really enjoying myself. But I tend to find myself putting in extra miles in the day and not really thoroughly enjoying the area in my surroundings as much as I think I should. I think that if I wasn’t heading to Martha’s Vineyard to work on the farm that I would definitely slow things down a little bit more. And maybe do some side trips. I left Draper yesterday after a really nice breakfast, and made my way pretty quickly to Radford Dash and found a coffee shop and found myself drinking copious amounts of coffee and eating three pieces of banana bread and talking with a very nice man a mathematics professor from Virginia Tech Andy Norton who is also a runner and even though I’m not a runner we still have that fitness thing in common and he wanted to know about my trip and he was able to give me some really nice Intel about where I was heading and some ideas on places for me to stay which was really nice so thank you Andy for that! I then rolled towards Catawba, Virginia to stay at the four Pines hostel which is primarily a Appalachian Trail hikers hostel. It’s definitely a different place and I’ll explain that in a few minutes but I started off with rain and I ended with rain basically it was a seven hour ride in the rain and it was pretty intense I have to admit. I got into Catawba around 630 and unfortunately the bunk room was already filled up with hikers so I got to sleep in a barn with three other hikers and no bikers. Basically it was sleeping on dirt that had been previously occupied by chickens so where there are feathers all around not the healthiest environment for sure and there was bird shit all over the place as well. But the cot that I slept on was super comfortable the only issue was and I’m not trying to be negative this is just the way it is is that the three hikers that were there decided they wanted to talk about life up until close to midnight finally I had to tell him to be quiet because I needed to sleep. I don’t mind communal living with other travelers but at some point they have to respect each other. But they were all nice folks. It always seems that the thru hikers always just see themselves as super bad asses and there’s always seems to me like they have chips on their shoulders a lot of like to come in to town and eat pizza and drink beer smoke weed or cigarettes and then some are just super quiet. It’s a wide range of people. Or maybe I’m just overreacting…And I enjoy them all actually. And not having any companions on this trip I was very excited to have some conversations albeit not about the bicycle but about their travels on the Appalachian Trail. But we’re all fellow travelers pilgrims solitaires, sauntering along in life. So we have that mutual respect for each other. I don’t have a trail name like the Appalachian hikers do but when I got there are many of them said hey you look like that father from the 70s show, Red?

So I kind of adopted that nickname with the trail hikers yesterday and if you look at that actor I can’t remember his name but I definitely do look like him now at this stage of my life. So yeah I rode from Draper to the Hostel and got about five hours sleep all the people I was bunking with in the barn two of them snored so that didn’t help my sleeping in there and got up this morning and in the fog heavy fog decided to roll out but legs were heavy feeling like lead which is a sure sign of me being tired also I was grumpy and short tempered another sign that I’m overdoing it a little bit. I kind of limped my way here to Buchanan-30+ miles-and got here around 12:30 and had a milkshake and a hot dog that seemed to lift my spirits a little bit but I could tell I was still tired so I asked a local adventure company if they had any ideas where I could camp and they kindly offered to let me camp behind their kayak facility right here on the James River so even though it was around 2 o’clock at that time I decided to go ahead and except. And took a nap and walked around town a little bit also there was a Civil War reenactment here in town so there were muskets firing men on horses with sabers and lotta cannon fire in the town park so that was kind of cool to see the actual life history here on a Sunday afternoon. Now I’m settled down by the James River going to do a little journaling and writing and reading as well. I rarely take half days but today’s just seem like a good half day it was supposed to rain but it only sprinkled a few times. There is a food place in town, Tami’s, that just opened it’s supposed to be pretty good and they have a 1 pound hamburger, so that has my name on it I’ll probably go over there around six and eat that and then come back and do some writing and get to bed early. I’m just glad to dry out all my gear from yesterday I definitely got soaked. Heading out towards Natural Bridge tomorrow then Lexington, Vesuvius and then the Blue Ridge Parkway which I’m super excited about I’m sure I’ll probably hit that tomorrow late in the day. The weather supposed to be perfect tomorrow in the upper 70s and sunny so I’m excited about that. This area is phenomenal and basically parallels the Appalachian trail as well. And Virginia is really become my new favorite state I really love Kentucky but Virginia is like amazing as well. I am sitting down by the James River there’s a lot of cool history in this area and yeah, day 30!so peace and love from the road, Bill